


whatever it takes

by writerforlife



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode: s02e07 The Believer, Gen, Introspection, grogu is his kid!!!, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28020489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerforlife/pseuds/writerforlife
Summary: Din considers what it means to have taken his helmet off, and what it means to be a father.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Din Djarin
Comments: 29
Kudos: 298





	whatever it takes

**Author's Note:**

> the working title for this short little piece was "i have a lot of feelings about din" so please enjoy

Fett and Fennec, even Cara, leave him alone, after. They’re all products of combat, not touchy-feely sort of people, but still, Din halfway expected one of them to check in. He’s grateful that they let the topic of his armor rest, that they let him slip away as everyone settles in for a long journey. Din still feels off-kilter. He takes some water, some food, and goes to his bunk.

Even when he’s alone in the closet-like space, he doesn’t take off the helmet. His food grows cold, his water lukewarm, as he sits on the edge of the narrow bed. He misses his bunk, Grogu sleeping in the sling above him.

He misses a lot more than that, but it’s easiest to think about the bunk. 

Din exhales, feeling wrung out, run over, and everything in between, but he knows he won’t be able to sleep. Not when he doesn’t know if Grogu is safe, if he’s…

Gideon wouldn’t kill him. Din knows that. It doesn’t make him feel any better, because anything short of killing him is fair game. 

_ Hang on, kid. _

He wonders, with all the magic…  _ Force _ stuff, if Grogu can sense Din’s thoughts. If he knows that Din is coming, and that nothing in the galaxy would stop him from destroying Gideon, if that was what it would take.  _ Please hang on.  _

Whatever it took, he would make sure his child was safe. 

_ It is dangerous, _ Din thinks,  _ to think of him as yours.  _

He finally removes his helmet and sets it to the side, catching a glance of himself in the cracked mirror. Usually, he didn’t linger on his reflection. Tonight, he looks. He has trouble meeting his own dark, exhausted eyes. In battle, if an enemy had his anxious eyes, Din would see that as a weakness. Was that was the Stormtroopers saw in him? He can only assume so. 

Din runs a hand over his moustache and beard. He feels undone, entirely so. He broke the Creed. _You broke the Creed._ No living being had seen his face in years—that’s what he’d told IG-11 when his life hung in the balance. He’d been prepared to die, then, but today, he’d done it. He’d removed his armor, his helmet, because of the kid. The Empire had seen his face. He’d wanted…

It had been in the back of his mind for a long time. After the krayt dragon. After the sand bike accident. After Ahsoka. He wanted the kid to see his face. He’d wrestled with the idea, but he’d come to the conclusion—Grogu deserved to see him, for they were family. Grogu, despite all of Din’s best efforts to not get attached, despite the duty Din had to return him to his kind, was his child. That robbed opportunity was yet another reason to hate Gideon. 

_ They have my child.  _

Din sips his water, blinking back tears. 

_ Gideon stole my child from me.  _

Din stares himself down in the mirror, trying to reconcile the man he is today and the man he was before Grogu and the man who took his helmet off and the man who confronted Bo Katan and the man who—

_ You have to get him back.  _

Whatever it took, Din would do it. 


End file.
